A Documentary Every Filipino Needs to See: An IndioHistorian Film Review of “Gusto nang Umuwi ni Joy”
It’s not usual for me to post anything unhistorical on this blog. I do take exceptions on films, plays and music that in their own way move me, not only as a historian, or as a Filipino, but as a person. The film, “Gusto nang Umuwi ni Joy” by director Jan Tristan Pandy is one of those exceptions.
The film debuts as part of GMA7’s Cine Totoo, the first Filipino international film documentary festival introducing this kind of films to Filipino audiences. The film is about Joy, an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in the U.K. whose only wish was to be granted a visa so she could return home and be with her family without sacrificing the employment opportunity in London.
It is not uncommon to watch this kind of story on screen. Migration and being away for lengths of time from the Philippines is part of our DNA as a people, historically speaking. Even Rizal struggled with the same engulfing homesickness when he left the country to study in Europe. He said in his diary:
“...little by little, the buildings were becoming smaller, their outlines were becoming confused...That was my motherland, my dear motherland. There I left love and glory, parents who adore me, solicitous sisters, a brother who watchers over my family and me, and friends. Oh yes! How many loves, how many hearts, which could have made me happy, and nevertheless I’m abandoning them! Will I find them free, just as I have left them?”
Indeed, many directors, writers, and playwrights have adapted this OFW material to films and on stage, understandably so, since it is almost a universal experience today among Filipinos to have one, two or more loved ones—families and friends—who migrated, or work abroad to earn a living for the family they left behind.
And yet Pandy’s film stands out, simply because the treatment allowed him to focus on that one life, and in effect highlighting the struggle of that one life.
There were certain scenes that make me wonder how in the world was that captured on film. Joy, the Pinay with a family back home, who works as a helper for a British household, was well aware of the lens that was focused on her, following her wherever she went. What’s more, Joy, the subject of the documentary is actually the director’s aunt. And yet despite all that, there was nothing in the film that felt contrived. The film simply let Joy speak for herself. The genius of the film lies in its un-wordy telling of Joy’s story. Even in the breaks and silences whenever she spoke, the audience could feel the loneliness Joy felt—it was not told per se, it was shown implicitly, and unapologetically. And those silences and breaks build up, as near the end of the film, she seals one balikbayan box she sends to her family and stares at it long enough with a relieved sigh--alluding that all her hopes and dreams are on that box to be sent home.
One of the bittersweet scenes in the film was when she swipes her phone for photo after photo of her family, and talks to them—as if she was there with them—to somehow relieve the silent pain and the overwhelming loneliness she feels being separated from her family by oceans.
No one knows the suffering of Filipinos abroad, especially those who only had meager means to go there and risk their lives and security for “greener pastures.” We on the receiving end here in the Philippines do not have the slightest hint of what our loved ones go through, out there surrounded by the unfamiliarity (and at times, hostility). They hold back their fears, and just live out the drudgery, hoping that one day, all their sacrifices would pay off.
On a personal note, I was reminded of our kababayans who I got to interview in Singapore on March 2010. In an unkept mall in Singapore called the Lucky Plaza, droves of Filipinas just sit there to cool themselves and spend their idle weekend break. And when I interviewed them, seeing that I’m also Filipino, they treated me as their own, pouring out their painful stories as if I’m a son they left back home. One even showed me her back full of burns from a flat iron, thanks to the merciful “amo” who made her eat only one cup of rice every day. “Gusto ko na umuwi, pero hindi pwede kasi nag-aaral pa mga anak ko…” I remember thanking them, and walking away tearfully and helplessly.
When I watched “Gusto nang Umuwi ni Joy,” I remembered their faces, and countless more whose stories we would never get to hear—experiences more painful than that of Joy. The documentary stripped away the statistical figures and showed on screen a pulsating life of a person in quiet desperation. The film resonates because the sense of exile is an almost universal experience. While it never explicitly pushed any advocacy for the OFWs, the film simply told the story. An OFW was given a voice. And that was more than enough.
Amidst the good cinematography, and great editing, here is a Filipino film documentary, with a heart.
I give it 5 stars. Highly recommended.
Catch it while you still can on September 29, at SM Megamall Cinema, 6:30pm.
